Produced by Al Haines
The three chapters which follow have already appeared in TheExpositor, and may be regarded as a supplement to the writer's work onThe Death of Christ: its place and interpretation in the NewTestament. It was no part of his intention in that study to ask or toanswer all the questions raised by New Testament teaching on thesubject; but, partly from reviews of The Death of Christ, and stillmore from a considerable private correspondence to which the book gaverise, he became convinced that something further should be attempted tocommend the truth to the mind and conscience of the time. Thedifficulties and misunderstandings connected with it spring, as far asthey can be considered intellectual, mainly from two sources. Eitherthe mind is preoccupied with a conception of the world which, whethermen are conscious of it or not, forecloses all the questions which areraised by any doctrine of atonement, and makes them unmeaning; or itlabours under some misconception as to what the New Testament actuallyteaches. Broadly speaking, the first of these conditions is consideredin the first two chapters, and the second in the last. The title—TheAtonement and the Modern Mind—might seem to promise a treatise, oreven an elaborate system of theology; but though it would cover a workof vastly larger scope than the present, it is not inappropriate to anyattempt, however humble, to help the mind in which we all live and moveto reach a sympathetic comprehension of the central truth in theChristian religion. The purpose of the writer is evangelic, whatevermay be said of his method; it is to commend the Atonement to the humanmind, as that mind has been determined by the influences andexperiences of modern times, and to win the mind for the truth of theAtonement.
With the exception of a few paragraphs, these pages were delivered aslectures to a summer school of Theology which met in Aberdeen, in Juneof this year. The school was organised by a committee of theAssociation of Former Students of the United Free Church College,Glasgow; and the writer, as a member and former President of theAssociation, desires to take the liberty of inscribing his work to hisfellow-students.
GLASGOW, September 1903.
It will be admitted by most Christians that if the Atonement, quiteapart from precise defin